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Orchestra returns from Europe, plays local concerts

A Far Cry, a self-directed orchestra that rehearses in a storefront in Jamaica Plain, recently returned from a European tour and played two concerts at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum at 280 Fenway. The group is the resident chamber orchestra at the museum.

“It was phenomenal,” Sarah Darling, A Far Cry violinist, said about the European tour.

The tour, which was A Far Cry’s fifth visit to Europe, lasted two weeks as the orchestra traveled throughout Austria performing. Darling said Europeans are “very serious about music” and have their own conception of what classical music is. But, she said, “We had an incredible reception wherever we played.”

Darling said the orchestra enjoyed the Europeans’ commitment to music. She said after concerts, A Far Cry always tells the audience to stay in contact with the orchestra and many European attendees did just that.

A Far Cry, which has been the resident chamber orchestra at the Gardner for two years, played two concerts at the museum on Dec. 6 and 9.

“I first heard A Far Cry several years ago in a Brookline Church, and I fell completely in love with each member individually and as a whole. It was the type of music-making I’d never heard before, and I immediately wanted to fold them into the Gardner’s music family,” said Scott Nickrenz, music director at the museum.

The orchestra, which rehearses in the storefront at 146A South St. in JP a week or two prior to a scheduled performance, will next play the museum in February. For more information, visit afarcry.org.